


everything stays, but it still changes

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, u know excluding the actual love confession we got lmao!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 06:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: “Does it hurt?” Keith asks a few nights later, stretched out next to him on the little bed. His fingers trace the curve of Shiro’s shoulder, just skirting the edges of his missing arm, but not daring to touch. “Your arm, I mean.”Shiro doesn’t know how to answer for a moment. “Not really,” he says, and, when Keith crooks an eyebrow at him, “Maybe a bit. It’s hard to explain.”Or: they adjust.





	everything stays, but it still changes

**Author's Note:**

> never thot i'd be able to write dialogue this goddamn sappy and have it be 100% in character but i had to do something after jds snatched the winter soldier au i was planning right out of my hands and did it better than i ever could have dreamed

This isn’t his real body. Or, it’s  _ a _ real body, that belonged to some version of himself, the memories of the other him filtering into his own, but it isn’t the one he grew up with. It’s brand new. There are no scars where they were before, save the one on his face, and he’s not even gonna start on his hair. His skin is smooth and blemish-free, save for the bruises from his most recent fight. Where he — where he almost.

He tried to kill Keith in this body. He spit venom and almost cut him open, almost blew him up, almost — he almost did a lot of things. 

He doesn’t remember much of it, at first. He wasn’t actually there for the fight, trapped inside the Black Lion, but this body belonged to someone else before it belonged to him, and so did this head. Allura stuck his consciousness into it, but she didn’t take the other one out. Or something. It’s hard to explain without sounding all Frankenstein or Freaky Friday. What happened is already scary enough; he doesn’t want to make things worse. 

So he tries to keep it to himself. But he remembers. It comes back in flashes, but he remembers.

He remembers the way Keith looked at him, the way he said his name, the way he told him it was all gonna be alright, I’m not leaving here without you, I’m not giving up on you. He remembers the way Keith felt underneath him, his arms straining against Shiro's sword. His voice cracking around his words. The sudden clarity when he realized what he was doing, what he had almost done, his arm sliced clean off and sparking and his head pounding. 

He wakes up with his head pounding, his brain beating against his skull. Sulfur on his tongue, Keith’s voice in his ears. He looks around frantically, at the curtains of his little makeshift room; the castle is gone, he remembers, stamping out the panic of unfamiliar surroundings. The bed he’s stretched out on is small but not uncomfortable. Keith is lying curled up, on the edge of it, face buried in the pillow, one hand fisted in the sheets and the other curled loosely around the air where Shiro's arm used to be. 

He almost killed Keith. Keith’s breath comes in little puffs, the rise and fall of his chest. Keith is alive. Shiro almost killed him. 

Keith has been sleeping in the same room as Shiro ever since they left. Or, he has a room of his own set up wherever they go, claims he’s only here to check up on him, to make sure he’s resting, but he always ends up staying. Shiro felt like he would never sleep again, but he always feels safe with Keith around. He always feels more like himself. More real. Shiro almost killed him. 

He runs a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. He’s exhausted. He closes his eyes, and Keith’s heartbroken face dances behind his eyelids, so he opens them again. Lies back down but doesn’t dare go back to sleep. Instead, he listens to the sound of Keith breathing, hand curled around his wrist, and tells himself that they’re both alive.

 

**

 

“Hey,” Keith says, voice soft. He puts a hand on Shiro's shoulder, gentle enough not to startle him. Shiro heard him coming, but it’s a kind thought. 

“Hey,” Shiro answers. Keith presses a warm cup of something into his hand. He keeps it there until Shiro has a firm grip on it, before he lets it go. 

(The first time he’d been handed something heavier than a piece of paper, it had slipped from his grasp and clattered all over the floor — which didn’t make sense, he’d never been bad at holding things, didn’t need to use two hands like a child, but it happened anyways and Shiro had barely been able to help clean it up, Hunk brushing him off and saying it was all good, don’t worry about it. Shiro had felt horrible. Now, Keith works with him instead of around him; doesn’t treat him like glass but doesn’t put too much weight on him.) 

“How’d you sleep?” Keith asks, sliding up onto the bed next to him. 

Shiro smiles, “Fine,” he lies, just a bit. “Woke up a little early, but I slept fine.” 

Keith smiles back, a quiet little thing, and takes a sip of his own drink. Almost coffee, Shiro thinks when he tastes it. Not quite the same, but enough to make nostalgia bloom in his chest.

“Did Hunk finally get the recipe down?” He asks. Hunk had been trying for a long while to make the limited food options into something more familiar, and coffee had been their best bet. The Garrison was practically run on the stuff. 

“Uh, yeah,” Keith says, “He got it a while ago, but he’s been perfecting it.”

He’s careful with the way he says  _ a while ago. _ The  _ while you were gone _ , is unspoken. 

Keith is older than Shiro remembers. Which make sense, considering how long he was away. His shoulders are no more broad, but he’s taller. His hair curls at the very bottom of his neck. His jaw is more defined. There’s a simple grace to his movement that wasn’t there back when — back when Shiro left. It always catches him off guard, how he glances over and Keith glances back with older eyes. It’s not a bad kind of older, and it doesn’t change the way he looks at him, but he still hasn’t gotten used to it yet. 

“Well, I’m impressed. It’s practically the same thing.”

Keith’s mouth curls up. “You should’ve tasted the first trial. Lance almost threw up.” 

“You stayed strong, though?”

“Always. I have an iron stomach, remember?”

“I remember you eating the nastiest food in the world and loving it, yeah.”

“The cafeteria potato salad?” Keith asks with a huff of a laugh, “That shit was so good.”

“It was horrible. Matt used to say they gave it out as an endurance test.”

Keith just shrugs, “Guess I have good endurance.” 

Shiro has to agree there. He tells him as much, and Keith does that thing where he looks pleased and embarrassed and disbelieving all at the same time. When Shiro first said he had potential as a pilot, when Keith broke Shiro’s high score in the sim. No matter how different he seems, he’s still the same Keith. 

They drink the rest of their almost-coffee in comfortable silence. There are sounds of movement just outside, Lance laughing faintly, pots and pans clinking together, the crackle of a fire. They’ve set up a temporary camp on a rocky little planet they found with few plants but running water; Coran grabbed enough Altean tech to put up a few little walls for some semblance of privacy, and they’ve dug a little fire pit in the middle of it all. They’re not planning to stay very long; just enough time for the Blade, Matt and a few other rebels who want to go to earth to find their way here before they set off again. 

Shiro tried to insist that a whole room wasn’t necessary, but he’s grateful for the privacy. He loves his team, and he’s happy to see them again, but he doesn’t know what he would do without a little space to himself, especially now. 

(Somehow, space to himself always seems to include Keith.)

“You ready for breakfast?” Keith eventually asks, “I can bring some in here, if you want.”

“Nah,” Shiro says, stretching his back out and sliding off the bed, “Some fresh air’ll be nice.”

He goes to reach for his vest, but realizes he still has the cup in his hand. Before he can drop it, Keith steps forwards and slips it out of his grip. 

“I got it,” he says quietly, “I’ll see you out there, alright?”

Keith doesn’t offer to help with the vest, which Shiro is quietly grateful for. He gives a small smile, and watches him go. 

It takes him a few minutes to finally get it on and zip it up, but it’s easier than it was the first time. He’s lucky his right arm wasn’t the one to get replaced and then cut off, or he’d actually be  completely useless. 

He runs his hand through his hair a few times to get it straightened out, though he doubts anyone will really care. Years at the Garrison have made him value these sorts of things; it makes him feel a little more like himself. 

He hears Keith make an annoyed noise somewhere on the other side of the curtain, followed by a few laughs. Shiro smiles at the sound. He takes a few breaths, straightens out his collar, and steps outside for breakfast.

 

**

 

It’s silly to say, but he forgot how much  _ work _ planning things is. He didn’t have much to like,  _ do  _ when he was stuck inside of Black, never really planned out more than what he was going to say if he ever managed to see Keith again — and even then, it was more rushed than he would have hoped for. Now, the Castle is gone, their ships are gone, and they have to plan a god-knows-how-long trip back to Earth. 

First and foremost, they’re waiting on Matt and the rebels, who are planning to bring a few extra ships and some more supplies. They take stock of the food they have, their supplies, little things they took for granted when they had a place to live. Shiro is reminded a little bit of how he felt moving to America to attend the Garrison, trying to think through every little thing he could possibly need — though, he did get a dorm back then. 

There’s really not much to go through. There’s not a lot of space in the lions for anything more than people, and the others didn’t have much time to grab everything they needed.

It will take Matt a week or so to get here; Kolivan has offered the Blade’s base as a place to rest and get their bearings, but it’ll take time, so they have to work with what they have for now. Keith talks about how to best ration the food they have, how they should probably sleep in shifts just in case, how to start a fire without a match. There’s an authority to his voice that wasn’t there before, enough that Shiro gets caught up in it. 

Lance asks, “Since when are you the expert on outdoorsy stuff?” even though he’s been nodding along, because Lance is Lance.

“Since I lived in the desert for a year. And then on the back of a giant rift whale for two.”

“That’s fair.”

Shiro does more listening than anything, giving his approval whenever anyone looks to him for it. Which makes something in his chest settle, knowing they still see his word as valuable. They look to him, he looks to Keith, and they all fall into place.

Still. Still. 

He stands and has to remember to balance out his weight. He reaches for something and only has one arm to do it. There’s a phantom ache where he felt nothing before. He didn’t love the arm the Galra gave him, but it was better than nothing at all. 

“Does it hurt?” Keith asks a few nights later, stretched out next to him on the little bed. His fingers trace the curve of Shiro’s shoulder, just skirting the edges of his missing arm, but not daring to touch. “Your arm, I mean.”

Shiro doesn’t know how to answer for a moment. “Not really,” he says, and, when Keith crooks an eyebrow at him, “Maybe a bit. It’s hard to explain.”

Keith hums. “I’ll listen, if you wanna try. You don’t have to, it’s just — you touch it a lot, like it aches, but you don’t look at it.”

“It doesn’t hurt. I just… forget it’s not there, sometimes.”

Keith is quiet for a long moment. Someone shuffles around outside. The fire crackles.

“Sorry I cut it off,” he says quietly. 

Shiro shakes his head, “Don’t be sorry. You saved my life.”

After I tried to take yours, he doesn’t finish. Keith just shrugs, doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

Shiro thinks of Keith splayed out underneath him, beat up and shaking. He wonders if Keith is thinking about the same thing. He wonders if he dreams about it, too, if it scares him like it scares Shiro. He can barely stand the thought of Keith being scared of him.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks before he can stop to think about it.

That makes Keith look at him. He sits up, the sheets pooling around his waist. Shiro pushes himself up, too. “Why would I be afraid of you?” 

“I tried to kill you, Keith.” he says, strained, “I almost did. I don’t see how you  _ couldn’t  _ be afraid of me.”

Keith’s eyes widen in brief surprise, but he doesn’t move away. “You remember?” His voice is small, quiet but calm.

“I remember most of it, I think. I didn’t at first, but I — I dream about it, sometimes. The me who wasn’t me, some of him is still — here, I think. I tried to kill you.”

Keith’s eyebrows furrow, his mouth twisted like Shiro's said something very stupid. “He tried to kill me. Not you.” 

“But,”

Keith shakes his head. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t even him, not really — it was Haggar, or Lotor or whoever was in charge. It wasn’t you and it wasn’t him.” 

“But I remember hurting you,” Shiro doesn’t know why he keeps pushing at it, poking at it like a nerve, but he can’t stop himself, “I remember saying those—those awful things. I remember hurting you. I —“

“Do you remember what I said?” Keith cuts in carefully. The words are stilted, as if he doesn't know whether or not he should say them. There’s no more movement outside, so Keith’s voice is the only thing he hears.

Shiro pauses. It hasn’t been very long since he woke back up again, but they still haven’t completely talked through everything that’s happened. They’ve both been too afraid to bring this up before now.

“Yeah,” Shiro says carefully. “I remember.”

“Then you remember that I meant it. I still — I still mean it.”

“Which part of it?” Shiro asks, because he needs to know. 

Keith flushes, just a bit, but refuses to look away. “That I—that I love you. I love you, Shiro.” 

Shiro remembers that, too, but it still makes his heart flutter whenever he thinks about it. Makes his breath catch right now, the way Keith’s eyes are laser focused on nothing else but him. 

When Shiro is quiet for a moment too long, Keith curls in on himself, “I mean. I mean it’s fine if you don’t — if you don’t, you know —“

“Keith,” Shiro cuts in quickly, bringing his hands up to grasp at his shoulders before he remembers he only has one. It puts him off balance for a moment, but Keith catches his arm and holds him up. Shiro leans into the touch. “Keith.”

Keith looks at him. “That’s my name, yeah.” 

Shiro bites back a smile. “Keith.” He says again, “Of course I love you, too.” 

Watching Keith bloom is like watching the sun rise, the way his eyes open wide and the color rises on his cheeks. 

“Honestly,” Shiro says, “I never thought you’d feel the same way.” 

“Oh,” Keith says, voice hushed, “Why not?”

“You’ve called me your brother like, twice.” 

Keith flushes, but still doesn’t look away, “Yeah, I guess that would send mixed signals, huh. I just… I didn’t know how to—how to even try.” 

“I think you did beautifully,” Shiro says, just to see the way Keith lights up. He brings his hand up to trace the curve of his jaw, the hair curling around his neck, just to tell if it’s real. Just to make sure, because Shiro still can’t believe he’s back at all sometimes; can’t be sure he hasn’t dreamed it all up.

Something must show on his face, because Keith cups the side of his face with his little—bigger, now—hand and says “Hey.”

“Hey,” Shiro answers. 

“I’m here. I found you. You’re good.”

“I know,” Shiro says, letting out the breath trapped in his throat. Keith’s face softens. 

“Good,” he says, and wraps his arms around Shiro’s neck, his head tucked in the crook of his shoulder. Shiro breathes in, and breathes out, and buries his head in Keith’s hair, something tangible and solid and real, and reminds himself that they’re both alive.

 

**

 

“Heard you played space DnD without me,” is the first thing Matt says when he sees him, barely glossing over his missing arm and new hair and Keith tucked underneath his shoulder.

Shiro laughs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> drop a comment or come [talk to me abt these boys](http://gaynasas.tumblr.com/)


End file.
